Five or six depredations of this character were committed in the course of a month. The people in camp began to have their suspicions aroused, and many were the conjectures as to who the guilty parties could be.
A company was formed to scour the cañon, but not even a clue of the highwaymen could be found, nor a place that exhibited any signs of a rendezvous.
This fact confirmed the suspicions of the law-abiding portion of the community, that there existed in their midst and neighboring settlements on Ute creek an organized band of "road agents," who started out only on favorable opportunities for carrying on their nefarious purposes.
It was believed by many that persons residing in Elizabethtown kept watch, advised their partners in this crime at Ute creek at what time a large shipment of gold would probably be made, and the number of passengers, with their names, the coach would carry.
Wal. absented himself from the camp a day or two at a time, and it began to be murmured that he could tell, if he would, a great deal concerning these systematic robberies. It was even hinted that he not only directly aided and abetted the attacks on the coach, but took an active part himself.
He was very reticent on the subject, and it was a fact commented upon by nearly every one in camp, that after an absence of two or three days he would invariably turn up the very morning after a robbery with a load of wood for sale, and as demurely ride through town on his little wagon as if such a thing as an attack on the coach the day before had never taken place.
Of course no positive proof of his complicity could be obtained, yet it was generally believed that he belonged to the gang.
The man who kept the principal saloon was well known throughout the Territory, not only on account of his size and weight but also in consequence of his insatiable thirst for "bug-juice" and his dexterous manipulation of the cards; and he was withal a law-abiding citizen. He would tolerate nothing that was not strictly "regular" in the eye of the law. He wouldn't steal a horse, or carry off a red-hot stove, but woe to the unfortunate and confiding individual who sat down to his game with the expectation of leaving with a cent in his clothes.
His thorough knowledge of monte, faro, poker, and other "genteel" games, made him as much a terror behind the green-covered table as a pack of highway robbers. While he would not hesitate to fleece some unsuspecting victim in a "gentlemanly" game, he had no sympathy with any law-breaker or "road agent" who would halt a man for his money without the farcical proceeding of having a little bout of cards to win it honorably.
One afternoon while the robberies of the mail coach were at their height, three or four broken-down gamblers sauntered into his saloon and commenced to discuss the last depredation, and the modus operandi of the efficient "agents."